cygnus
by SebonzaMitsuki27
Summary: RenoElena. Post-game. If it's meant to be, then it's meant to be.
1. one

"No." She looks away and loves-loves-_hates_ that she's breathing fast. "… no."

"… 'Lena." He's so gentle, right now; Elena can barely feel his hand on her wrist. Knows how hot it is on her cold skin; feels how his eyes are going deeper into her soul than she should. "C'mon."

"Just—" Elena closes her eyes and the words die on her lips. Maybe the intensity will be lost if she can't see him. "I can't." It doesn't.

"I'm just asking you to give up." His voice is so loud against the silence and the hammering heart in her chest. "Is that really so hard to ask?"

And she looks at him. really, really looks at him.

His mouth is saying _I like you._

His heart is saying something similar, yet a little different.

"Yes." The female Turk whispers, unaware of how quiet they are being. "It is."

"Oh, _'Laney_." It must be a crime to say her name like that, lifting her heart so high in the air.

"Stop." Her voice is soft, but also firm. She has a boyfriend. A _boyfriend_. And… to give in, to give up… no matter how lovely that would be… she… she—_can't._ Can't think. Can't move. Can't think straight when Reno holds her like she's a queen; and the female Turk has to consciously snatch her hand away, his long fingers sliding from her wrist like gossamer silk. "Don't do this, Reno. I don't—" Elena wets her lips and finds the strength to speak and stand her ground, even if right and wrong is slipping before her very eyes. "I told you, I don't want this anymore."

"Fine." Restrained, Reno keeps his temper in check, but even that doesn't stop the anger from flashing in his green, green eyes; tenderness easily replaced.

And he's gone, unable to linger any longer.

Elena knows, and hates herself for knowing that for Turks, despite casting such a perfect façade of detachment and cruelty, they are such wooden actors to each other.

She wants to say sorry—

But it's too late for that.

_x x x _

**cygnus**

_x x x _

The first time it's an accident.

No, perhaps not even that.

But it's certainly the most innocent kiss between them.

She—they—herself and Reno, thought that were going to die. They were in a mission and there was a bomb on the stake, ticking the seconds away.

He must have been standing too close. Far, far too close. That's what it was, Elena decides later, upon reflection, and they didn't realize that the bomb hadn't exploded and that they were still alive.

It could barely even qualify as a kiss.

Two lips touching… that's all it was.

Even so, it makes her face blush beet red.

Then the door opened, and Rude was there with a stoic expression, as always. He didn't comment, merely inclining his head to tell them to get a move on.

They didn't talk about it.

… maybe that was the problem.

_x x x _

She'd like to say that she never felt it.

That spark.

This… _bond_ with the redheaded, green-eyed Turk.

But the truth is, she'd always felt it; even as he teased and patronized her, even as her temper flared and heart quickened. Though she put it to annoyance, denying what was really there.

Always there, like gravity pulling them towards each other.

Never quite the same as what she felt—_feels_ for Tseng.

_x x x _

"It's not that I believe in the legend," Elena says to Rude, hating the antiseptic smell of the hospital that she is forced to be in due to unfortunate circumstances. It's not that the hospital is clean; it's _too_ clean and clinical even for her. Nonetheless, her hands fold a piece of paper into a crane so easily, it's almost an unconscious thing, like a nervous tic that she is compelled to do. With a grin, she hand the finished product to him. "But I like pretty things."

"…" Her bald friend takes it easily, delicately placing the crane in his pocket. "Are you sure that you're all right?"

"I'm fine!" Enthusiastically nodding, the blonde assures him. "I'm fit as a fiddle with a broken string. Well, _leg_, really, but since fiddles don't actually have legs… I'm not entirely sure how the analogy could be anatomically equivalent or correct. Do you?"

There is silence.

Rude plays with the buttons of his shirt, seemingly debating whether he should take out her crane and admire it some more.

"… I'm glad you're all right." He says finally.

"I'm glad you visited." Quick to shine, Elena beams; realizing that she had probably spoken too much too quickly. The silent apology is accepted.

Out Rude goes and in comes Reno, an understanding between them.

"Hello," Elena starts, but doesn't quite know what to say. Her hands are already forming another crane, the supply of paper apparently endless to ShinRa resources.

"Hey," Reno grins, mouth wide. He kisses her cheek and she tries to hide her slight blush. "How are you?"

"Good." Her smile fades a bit. "I'll be better soon."

"Yeah." Absentmindedly, Reno sits on her bed, grin still visible. "That a swan you're making?"

"Crane, actually." Finished, she lifts it up into the air. Wishes it could fly on its own and flap to life. "I never thought it could be a swan."

It's a lie – before she picked up the origami book, she really had thought that crane was another word for swan, less pretty, but still – she wants him to talk to her.

"So you believe in the legend, then?"

"Me? No." A bashful smile, and her brown eyes meet his. "For that, I'd have to do one a day, with a wish. This is my second, and they're purely for fun." A thought occurs, and now seems the perfect time to say it. She swears her ears perk up like a puppy, though, and doesn't quite know why. "Here. You can keep it. I mean, it's for you. I made it for you."

"Thanks." A scuttle of paper, hands brushing for the longest second, and the crane is his, her hand playing with her hair. And still he grins cheekily as if nothing in particular has happened. "I'm still calling it a swan though."

"Oh yeah?" Intrigued, she sits up, as best she can with a broken leg and with Reno beside her. "Why's that?"

"Far more romantic, 'Laney." A slapdash grin, and he flicks her nose. "Cranes, you have to reach a thousand of them to get whatever the hell you want. Swans, though, they know in a heartbeat. They know the love of their lives in a heartbeat, and once they know, it's for the rest of their lives. Their mate dies, and the swan will just wait until he joins her, remaining in that spot, not eating, not moving… simply staying there."

"You don't think that the swan should look for someone new?"

"What's the point, Elena, if no one can compare?"

She wonders when this conversation began to mean something else and can't quite find the words to reply immediately.

_x x x _

Their second kiss is in front of Tseng.

But at the time, she didn't know that he was there.

At the time, she was more concerned with the white cream tinged red with strawberry juice that stained the corner of his mouth.

Impulsively, she had intended to just lick it off, a playful gesture. Reno held on hand of hers in his, and her other hand rested on her thigh.

But in that slow, slow second her free hand found itself settling on his neck. Just as his free hand crept onto her hip.

And then Tseng had cleared his throat and they'd jump apart, though their hands remained together.

She couldn't meet either of them with her eyes, though later she shared a giggle with Reno.

_x x x _

The thing is, Elena's confused.

It's not sudden, how it happens, whatever _it_ is.

It's slow and building before her very eyes.

Yet it somehow escapes her notice that she's been thinking more and more of Reno and less and less of Tseng.

She wonders how he feels about this.

_x x x _

Reno's been getting less phone calls. Either because he's avoiding the women that he likes to chat up, or because he's hanging up on them and forgetting their very names.

Elena doesn't notice. Or—rather, she tries—_pretends_ not to notice as she talks with Rude in the bar and doesn't (no, not at all) see Reno out of the corner of her eye and see some lady write her number on a lipstick marked napkin. Even if she _does_ see Reno throw it in the bin without a second thought.

It's just—

"Hey!" Reno grins, infectiously bright.

"Hey yourself!" She replies, slurping down her ginger beer, the closet to alcohol that she'll ever get.

It's just the way he smiles… she can't really find a reason to _not_ smile back.

_x x x _

The hugs must have come through one of her boys drunken episodes. Reno usually leans on her for support as they stumble back home, while Rude is quite content to merely let her take his hand and guide him forward.

It must have been that, but even so, it doesn't stop there.

The hugs transfer in moments of sobriety too. And… it's not an unwelcome change, not really.

Elena _likes _the weight of his arms around her, and how she can inhale his scent whenever she wants to in their tight embrace.

It feels natural.

The hugs don't even have to be big teddy bear hugs that Rude is fond of giving when he's feeling especially affectionate. The hugs that Reno and Elena share can be small hugs that make her twirl into his chest, or simply a brush across her cheek, fingers resting not a moment too long, or pushing back a lock of hair behind her ear. Her redhead friend loves to tease her that she only grew her out hair for this purpose. She herself will insist that this is not the case, and would immediately set to work on braiding his hair. And if he had a problem, then really, Reno, despite his complaining, would have cut it long ago.

She likes being affectionate with Reno. Maybe even a little bit more than that, though she'd rather die than admit it.

But she doesn't like it as much when he's incredibly drunk and he'll mumble some strange rambling. Every few minute he would stop and tell her a compliment, pressing a kiss against her ear in between every word.

They make her ears tingle a different kind of red.

_x x x _

These are her secrets that she'll never tell and Reno doesn't comment and Rude doesn't mind.

And every piece of paper that folds into a crane—or is it swan?—is like a confession that she'll never make.

_x x x _

Disclaimer: ffvii is not mine.


	2. two

It's tradition between them.

Elena gives him a swan and Reno gives her a box of chocolates that he always intends for her to share with him later.

But this year it's different.

He tears her swan, tears the ornate, pretty paper into pieces.

And though she stares, she can't bring herself to eat those tasty chocolates, throwing them in the bin, rescuing them, then placing them in the fridge, at the very back where she can't see them.

This can't last.

It _can't._

_x x x _

**cygnus**

_x x x _

"Elena." Tseng calls her, and for the first time, she realizes that she feels nothing romantic for him. She hasn't for quite some time. The admiration is still there, and so is her shyness, but not the love. Not _love_-love. Friend-love and boss-love, but not love-love. She's not entirely sure whether to be pleased or embarrassed that she's categorized the different versions of love like this, but then she's running on a tangent that's got to end like _right now._

But she wonders when it happen, how her respect for him to remain, while that 'love' slowly dissolved.

"Boss." She's being hanging around Reno too much, she thinks. She prefers saying Tseng's name, despite the informality that it implicates. "Is something the matter?"

"Nothing to worry about, Elena." There's a slight twitch of his mouth, Elena believes it to be a smile – if only a small one. She wonders what he's thinking, and if he's been reading her mind through his psychic Wutainian heritage. "Just a mission."

"Oh." Excitement comes too easily, adrenaline flowing through her veins. She hasn't had a mission for so long. Smiles, up to the job. "Fill me in."

_x x x _

"Oh, 'Lena." Reno grins, tongue lolling out as he appraised her. "To think, that one so _gifted_ as you is reduced… to _this._"

"Shut up!" She punches him on the arm, hoping it'll hurt and knowing it won't. "I'm a Turk, dammit!"

"That's right." Reno nods. "So do it with pride."

She would—she _will_—if she didn't feel so humiliated. Besides, no matter how mediocre, small or insignificant, she will do her job well.

"…"

"So, just let us men get the job done."

"Sexist pig." She mutters, narrowing her eyes at him. But worry is soon to come. "Let me know if you need help."

"Course." He says it so easily, but something flickers – tangible, and too quickly, and the moment has passed before she even knows what it is.

They should get going, yet they don't move an inch.

There is a terrible, terrible reason for this.

"… and?" Eventually, she says with clenched teeth.

"I'd like a balloon please, in the shape of a motorcycle." Grinning, Reno says. Even Rude cracks a smile. Elena merely flushes in embarrassment.

_Damn her mission!_

"As you wish, good sire of the bluebells." That was what she had to say to customers, right? "May I also stab your eyes out?" It was something along those lines… maybe. Or maybe that's just reserved for Reno.

"'Laney?" A knowing look, an insufferable smirk.

She does _not_ want to say it. But a job is a job.

So she takes a deep breath, and opens her mouth, utterly, utterly emotionless and angry.

"Ayuk-yuk-yuk, coming right up." Growling, the rhyme is excruciatingly painful to her ears.

_Why_ did she have to take those lessons of a balloon bending?

_x x x _

She wishes she had said _take care_, or something along those lines as she threw the motorcycle in his face and turned away.

Because she's never had quite an ominous feeling about a job before – not like this, where she has to wait on the sidelines and man the entrance. Usually, that meant that the job was easy, that there was nothing to worry about.

It's supposed to be a simple mission, so how did it go so wrong?

_x x x _

He's bruised and bloody and for once she doesn't know if he's going to be okay, clothes torn and ripped and she's scared, so scared—

"… 'Lena," Rude says, hand on shoulder, squeezing reassuringly. "He's going to be okay."

More than ever, she wants to be true.

_x x x _

She reaches her tenth swan before she breaks down crying.

Doesn't realize that with every swan she's been making, that her wish has remained the same.

Or maybe she does, but won't even admit it to herself; because she doesn't say the words that she longs to speak.

It doesn't matter that she stays silent and can't think of anything to say – anything that matters.

If she's by his side, then it's okay.

She'll give him a swan every day with a message scribbled in and hide it in his draw or under his pillow so he'll never have to know.

_x x x _

His eyes open, beautiful emerald green.

"… hey, babe." He hasn't spoken in so long.

"Reno!" Relieved, she kisses his two tattoos and blinks back tears. It was instinctive. But she can breathe a little easier now. "You're all right."

"Aw, you know me, 'Laney." He grins a little painfully, and a little cockily. "I always turn out all right."

"Yeah? Well, next time don't scare me like that!" Hands on her hip, she thinks she really needs caffeine.

"Okay, 'm sorry."

But she doesn't hear him.

"Because I like you! I really, really like you and—" Elena stops, aware of what she's about to say.

"And?" His eyes are so curiously, curiously green.

"And…" She shrugs, settling simply for this. "… I just can't imagine a me without you."

_x x x _

She wants to believe that what she said was all a dream.

Or that she said it while Reno was on drugs and therefore wouldn't remember it, or at least chalk it up to hallucinations.

But the truth is, he was lucid and so her panicking mind doesn't know what to do.

_x x x _

It's simply _not safe._ To fall—to _really like_ someone like that in their profession.

She's a Turk. He's a Turk.

There are risks to their jobs, great risks, and there's never a promise made that they'll get the job done alive. The paycheque compensates for this, but…

She can't. She really, really _can't_.

_x x x _

His name is Matt, and he's not perfect.

But he works in a sweetshop and there's something so adorable in the way his eyes light up when he tells a bad joke or tastes saccharine sweet.

It's not butterflies that she feels around him, but it's… it's nice.

Safe.

_x x x _

"Who is he, then?" Reno enquires, his tone perfectly, perfectly neutral.

Honestly, she'd never intended Matt to be a secret. She did behave a bit stupidly in that regard.

If she was going to have so many texts and calls and skipping Friday night take out at the bar adventures to be with him… Elena should have been a bit more discreet in that aspect.

But she's not _ashamed_ of Matt. She doesn't feel… _guilty_. At all.

Why would she be?

Reno shouldn't look at her like that, his expression a mixture of pity and confusion.

"His name is Matt." She says, lips dry.

"'Laney," Reno takes her hand and she hates how easily Reno can make the world stop and turn so easily.

"Yeah?"

He doesn't anything for a while, merely gazing his eyes of jade to hers of brown; and there's this feeling of disappointment that Elena can't shake off.

His mouth parts and she doesn't know what he's going to say. She's got to speak—say something, _anything_—as long as he doesn't.

"Reno—"

He lets go of her.

"Have a nice night."

_x x x _

She wants to say something as she watches him walk away.

This isn't right—this isn't how it's supposed to be!

She just—

_Give up._

Oh, oh, she just can't.

And she stays there, hardly able to move.

_x x x _

Elena hates how distant he gets.

No more hugs, no more teasing. There's this barrier between them, and she hates how insecure she is, going for the _safer_ option instead of the one she really wants.

She breaks up with Matt even though he stays to wipe her tears away and makes sure that she gets home alright.

Maybe Loveless isn't the right play to watch.

_x x x _

Too late.

Of course.

Her swans, beautiful paper swans have been thrown away.

Crushed with high heels, black lace corsets, fur and fancy hats with a woman named Vanessa.

Pretentious rich—

She's Reno's girlfriend.

Of course.

_x x x _

"Was I like that?" She asks Rude, crashing at his place.

"No."

"Did he…" Words tremble on the tip of her tongue, but she continues nonetheless. "Did he look at me like that?"

There's a pause, long and debilitating.

"No, never."

_x x x _

"I hate swans." Vanessa drunkenly informs Elena, eyes glassy. But she takes the half finished product and rips it apart with her manicured nails. "Stupid, despicable birds. Think they're so high and might, when really they're just as vile as a badger."

Elena doesn't really know what to say, as she sits a little closer to Rude and sips a bit more of her ginger beer.

"You'd like to think that they're creatures of romance, wouldn't you?" Vanessa cackles, slurring her words and leans sideways, clinging-clinging-clinging to the redhead. She doesn't seem to be aware of the despair she spreads, fine material not enough to disguise her haughty ugliness. "But really, romance is dead."

"Oh?"

"Absolutely." Her mane of brown hair nods and doesn't stop. Elena feels slightly nauseous being around her, and wonders what Reno sees in her. "There is only sex."

And that, Elena supposes, sums up Vanessa's relationship with Reno exactly.

_x x x _

She really didn't want him to see her cry.

She looks horrible – eyes puffy and red, skin wet and blotchy.

It's just—she can't stand it, can't stand Vanessa. Elena hates the marks she leaves on Reno; be it teeth or lipstick stains or where her nails make Reno bleed – Elena hates them all.

But she's the one at fault, because she decided that she shouldn't date Reno.

This is her fault, because she was too afraid.

"Hey, 'Lena." Warm and inviting, Reno calms her down with the lightest touch. "C'mere."

She wants to say no. But she can't.

So she does, giving in to him, and she still fits into his arms and inhales when he exhales.

"Missed this." Elena mumbles, not entirely sure if he can hear her. "Missed you."

"Me too, 'Laney." She can feel his mouth curve as he places his chin on her head. "Me too."

_x x x _

He breaks up with Vanessa.

_x x x _

"Why didn't you tell me that Matt was gone?"

"Why would you care?"

"… I always cared, 'Lena, I never stopped."

_x x x _

"Did you find her?" Elena asks, half laughing and half struggling to get to her feet as she picks herself up from the snow, her snowboard in her hand. "Your… um, your swan mate?"

Wonders if he remembers their conversation.

And he grins.

"Yeah, I did."

She grins back, a reminiscent smile playing on both their faces.

"And?" She throws a snowball at him, ducking for cover.

"Well, I'm with her, aren't I?"

He takes her by surprise, tumbling together down the mountain slope and when they stop, breathless and starry eyed, their noses are bumping against each other.

Elena giggles.

"Yeah, you are."

And kisses him.

_x x x _

**a/n.** _Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed._


End file.
